Investigators are scrambling to figure out why a military helicopter and a passenger airplane collided and plunged into the Potomac River in Washington DC late Wednesday, the first major US air crash in 16 years.
From the little that’s known, human error likely played a role, raising questions about a chronic shortage of air traffic controllers and pilots. Authorities may also be looking at coordination between military and civilian aviation.
An Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter carrying three soldiers apparently plowed into the tail of a Bombardier CRJ-700 jet out of Wichita as it was less than a mile from landing at Reagan National Airport. The flaming remains of both aircraft tumbled a few hundred feet into the shallow, icy river.
The passenger jet, which was operated by regional carrier PSA Airlines on behalf of American Airlines, had 64 people on board, and police boats have already recovered 27 bodies. The last aircraft tragedy this deadly in the United States was the Colgan Air crash in New York state in 2009.
The helicopter may have taken off from a military base near the airport. In a grainy video from the Kennedy Center, a smaller light, presumably the helicopter, can be seen overtaking the brighter light of the plane, both of them flying low to the ground. The two collide in a massive explosion, splitting into several burning fragments.
A few minutes before arrival, air traffic control asked the American Airlines flight if it could land on runway 33, a shorter runway. The pilots said yes, apparently switching runways during their approach. Some have wondered whether this change in flight path could have caught the Black Hawk off guard.
But retired Air Force Brigadier General John Teichert told NewsNation television that this shouldn’t have caused a crash. “I think that while they would have been told to switch runways, it’s not this aggressive maneuver in a regional jet that would prompt them to reposition and be a surprise to the Black Hawk,” he said.
Eighty percent of aviation accidents worldwide can be attributed to human error, and that is a prime candidate in this case, Marco Chan, a former pilot who now heads pilot programs at Buckinghamshire New University, told WIRED.
“Perhaps safety protocols, human factors were at play,” he says. “I don’t like to draw conclusions early on. In general, globally, after the pandemic, while the passenger number has bounced back quite a bit, I don’t think the workforce number has caught up, in every aspect of aviation.”
Air traffic control asked the helicopter if it had seen the aircraft, and was told to “pass behind the CRJ,” which would have had the right of way unless the Black Hawk was on an urgent military mission. It’s not known if the helicopter responded.
Military flights sometimes operate on different radio frequencies than passenger flights, so the passenger jet’s crew may not have heard the tower radioing the Black Hawk. Or there may have been a jammed transmission: If more than one party on a channel are radioing at the same time, that can prevent others from hearing the whole conversation.